Pepis Music Brain

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The most intriguing storyline in pro wrestling this month is not a title chase or a bloody feud, but whether or not fans are going to keep chanting "Fuck ICE" at shows. I am more than happy to explain this to you. What's your first question?

To be honest, I think of pro wrestling the same way I think of NASCAR. Are the right-wing rednecks turning against ICE?

I appreciate your honesty, but your information is out of date. Yes, if your main intersection with pro wrestling was the late-'90s boom on U.S. cable TV, then you definitely saw a product rife with misogyny and homophobia. But it's a much more inclusive hobby than it used to be, and I tell people who I want to convince to go to an independent show with me that they should expect something like a comic-con atmosphere, not a frat house. While every fandom has its jerks, I'm confident calling a wrestling show a safer space for queer people than a men's sporting event. Well, unless you're going to Saudi Arabia for a WWE show.

Yeah, what's the deal with WWE?

So WWE is undeniably a right-wing company, even beyond the whole "we like to screw over our workers" thing. Their sibling promotion, UFC, laps the field in the creation of Trump propaganda. Paul Levesque, their head of creative, is vice-chair of the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition, made up of a who's who of right-wing athletes, as well as a couple commissioners. And the current Secretary of Education is Linda McMahon, whose creep of a husband delivered unprecedented profits to the pro wrestling business. The actual WWE television shows are self-consciously sanitized and corporate-friendly, and Ron DeSantis got booed while attending a WWE show in Florida last year, so that tells you something about the overall wrestling audience. But still, WWE makes All Elite Wrestling look like the DSA by comparison.

I've read a few of your blogs. They're the No. 2 promotion, right?

Thank you! Yes. AEW began in 2019 as a WWE alternative, and they've solidified as a successful, entertaining wrestling company. They're run by Tony Khan, the son of a billionaire who used to support Trump and still might, so you're free to draw your own conclusions about his personal politics. There are undoubtedly conservative wrestlers in AEW—one of the most explicit Trump guys in the industry, Chris Jericho, was a cornerstone of the company in its early days—but as a leader, Khan is notable for both allowing his lefty wrestlers freedom of expression and for imbuing the company with a sort of "Be respectful to folks who are different" ethos that scans as particularly progressive in 2026. He may not be a liberal, but he's not a zealot like Dana White or an ass-kisser like Levesque.

One of AEW's earliest women's world champions, Nyla Rose, is trans, and it wasn't treated like a big or even a little deal. The promotion's wrestlers have made gestures of support on TV for abortion rights and the rights of trans kids. One of AEW's signature stars, "Hangman" Adam Page, is explicitly described by announcers as a friend to immigrants, and serves, in a way, as the conscience of the company. He spoke out against ICE running commercials during AEW programming, without reprisal from Khan, and overall he displays some endearing Good Dude politics. He gave a long, impressive speech in Spanish last year before winning the world title, about how he was going to kick Jon Moxley's ass but also about how cool it is when Americans and Mexicans work together.

The vast majority of AEW's television scans as apolitical, "normal" pro wrestling, but if you're an alienated progressive searching for pop-culture heroes, this company comes close.

So this "Fuck ICE" thing is about "Hangman" Page?

Actually, no! I think Page's status as an openly progressive top star helps set the tone, but the guy who took some of the subtext of that speech above and made it blunter is the wrestler Brody King, who wore an "Abolish ICE" shirt on that same episode of TV from Mexico City. King is big and tatted up. He fronts a hardcore band and appeared on I Think You Should Leave. The California native, who is crucially not an ex-WWE guy, is a longtime member of AEW's middle class, and he's liked and respected by the fanbase. In the past several months, he's been given a stronger push than usual, first with a really good 2025 tag team run alongside the Mexican luchador Bandido, and then with a title feud against the villainous rich douchebag Maxwell Jacob Friedman.

It was King's first confrontation with MJF, at a show in Las Vegas on Feb. 4, where our story really begins. Before the start of the match, a vocal portion of a fairly modest crowd started chanting "Fuck ICE," and there was enough dead air in the ring that it really sunk in for anyone watching the broadcast.

That's cool. I mean, yeah, fuck ICE, obviously.

Obviously. This and other anti-ICE chants at sporting events are relatively small gestures of resistance, but AEW's came in the right context to break into the mainstream. Particularly for those who still associate wrestling with lunkheaded conservatism, the implication was irresistible: "These guys are so unpopular that even wrestling morons hate them!" That's not exactly accurate, as you now know, but it gave AEW more coverage from non-wrestling outlets than it's had in a long while.

So how did AEW respond?